The Mansfield, Ohio City Council approved $86,400 on August 21 for a single bronze plaque outside Central Park's restored fountain, honoring the committee that restored it.
The Mansfield City Council voted 5-2 on August 21 to finalize a contract with a regional foundry for a bronze commemorative plaque set beside the newly restored Central Park fountain. Council President Cheryl Meier signed the purchase order the same evening. The fountain restoration itself, funded separately, wrapped in June. The plaque was billed as a finishing touch.
The final invoice came to $86,400 — for a single cast plaque measuring roughly three feet by two feet. City records show $61,000 went to the foundry, $14,000 to a stone base, and $11,400 to installation and a dedication ceremony. No other municipal plaque in Mansfield's public records exceeds $9,000.
"We wanted something that would last a hundred years."— Cheryl Meier, Mansfield City Council President
The names on the bronze
The plaque lists fourteen names, including three sitting council members and two of their spouses, who served on the volunteer fountain committee. Resident Gary Ockert, who attended the August 21 meeting, asked why volunteer names required an $86,000 casting. He got no direct answer before the vote passed.
Buried in the foundry's line-item breakdown is a $4,200 charge for 'hand-applied gold leaf lettering' — an upgrade the committee chair approved by email in July without a second council vote, according to the purchase file obtained by this outlet.
Mansfield's Central Park fountain restoration cost $312,000 in city and state funds, completed in June. The plaque was added afterward as a separate line item, not part of the original restoration budget.
Two votes against it
Council members Jason Zeigler and Laura Burns cast the two dissenting votes. Zeigler called the price 'out of proportion to the project' during the meeting, according to the city's published minutes, and asked for a rebid that never happened before the contract was signed.
The plaque was installed and dedicated on August 29. City spokesperson Tim Bowers said no changes are planned. The $4,200 gold-leaf charge remains on the books as approved, with no additional council review scheduled.
The fountain runs. The plaque gleams. Nobody asked for either price tag out loud until it was already cast.
Man Arrested Wearing Stolen MASCOT Head
Only In America
Police in Lakeland, Florida arrested a 34-year-old man on August 28 after he was found walking down South Florida Avenue wearing a foam alligator mascot head reported stolen from a nearby high school storage shed two days earlier.
Officers said the man, identified in the arrest report as Dennis Ruiz, was stopped after a passerby called 911 to report 'a large alligator walking through traffic.' Ruiz is charged with petit theft and obstruction, according to the Polk County Sheriff's Office booking log.
The mascot head, valued by the school district at $2,300, was recovered intact. Ruiz reportedly told officers he 'just wanted to try it on' and had been wearing it for roughly three hours before he was stopped, the arrest report states.